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Sunday, August 11, 2013

It's a simple concept, yet quite compelling: click a button as fast as you can in a set period of time.

Button Masher marks many milestones for my development history.For one, it is my first game coded completely from scratch. Another first is the ability to keep score, improving replay value. And finally, this is my first game to keep save data, in the form of stats. Button Masher is HTML5 ready and should work with the latest versions of all major browsers.Button Masher is part of the Masher Series, a collection of mashing related games. Check out Keyboard Masher and Mouse Swipe, the other games in the series.

I'm back! After being gone for several months, I am back to delivering content to this blog, but with some important changes.

For one, I am longer working on any more PowerPoint projects. That's right. I am done with PowerPoint. No new PowerPoint projects will be created, and although I may update some of my current ones, the chances are unlikely.

The reasoning for this is mainly with compatibility and practicality. One of my major frustrations with PowerPoint is that I have to deal with multiple versions. For example, I can make something work in PowerPoint 2010, but it won't work whatsoever on PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, no matter what I do (ex: ActiveX). And then that thing that works with PowerPoint 2010 may not function properly on PowerPoint 2007, let alone PowerPoint 2003. I usually cannot fix any problems with older versions of PowerPoint without breaking anything, and it drives me nuts.

But what saddens me most is that I can spend countless hours on a PowerPoint project, only to find out that I can't share it to anyone I know, usually because they don't have PowerPoint or they're using an older version of PowerPoint. PowerPoint isn't free. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite that can cost hundreds of dollars. Sure, almost any computer is capable of running PowerPoint, but what's the whole point of that if someone has to pay $150 in order to do so? And worse, for Mac users who want to run ActiveX presentations, they would have to pay an additional $100 for a Microsoft Windows license, along with undergoing installation just to run a single PowerPoint file. It's simply not worth it.

However, this doesn't mean I'm giving up on PowerPoint altogether. I'll still keep my PowerPoint projects posted, and I can still help out people regarding PowerPoint. After all, this PowerPoint game experience really taught me a lot of things about PowerPoint I would have otherwise never knew. Heck, I might even remove the passwords on all my PowerPoint projects for you guys to experiment with.

Now, for the next change.

I am moving on to actual coding. To transition myself away from PowerPoint, I have started to teach myself HTML, CSS, and Javascript. And I can actually make some pretty cool projects out of these Web languages. I have already made a game using Javascript so far that I will be posting soon. The cool thing with actual coding is that I have complete control on how my projects look and function. I can also do things I could otherwise never do with PowerPoint, such as keeping score and time. And best of all, Javascript runs on virtually all computers! I'll still keep the Tim's Slideshow Games branding, but instead of it just for PowerPoint games, it'll be for all my future games and projects.

Alright, time for me to begin revamping the blog to accommodate these changes. Thanks for reading!